As Mysteries Come And Go, So You Are The Weird ThingJose Di Gregorio

28.4 - 3.5.2016

Visiting hours: as a work in a storefront space, this piece has been designed to be viewed through the window at the street, however visiting hours outside the openings may be scheduled via raine.vasquez@gmail.com or th1rdspac3@gmail.com

​In the 1940‘s, a translocated Theodor Adorno, writing from his exile in “German California,” contemplated the dawning of a new sensorium: With the emergence of modernity, and the vast array of techno-mechanical objects, such as ‘automatic’ door-closers and catches and handles on windows, cars, and refrigerators, Adorno considered the pedagogical demands of this ‘gay science:’ He bemoaned the ‘bad manners’ that might result from a culture where you don’t have to think about closing the door after you. He emphasized the way that machines shape us in their image.“The new human type cannot be properly understood without awareness of what he is continuously exposed to from the world of things about him, even in his most secret innervations.” (Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life)Creating a visually-saturated environment, a space that hums and vibrates, can in fact affect the immediate thought process. How does a world of spatial chaos—of flatness transmuted through geometry into deep pockets of representative space, of patterns working to collapse the physicality of place—shape the viewer? Maybe it taps a positively different way of ruminating on things. Rather than the anxiety of future concerns (of kids growing up in a potentially hostile planet, the speeding of age, etc), perhaps the viewer can stop and become mindful of the present moment. Do they look to the cognitive ‘op art’ or to the performative mandala?

​ Walter Benjamin, Adorno’s contemporary, likewise described a world where humans have adapted themselves to things—New machines, which buzzed and whirled, bred nuanced movements and quicker reflexives. But Benjamin’s was a more positive outlook: the possibility of a new sensorium, of the new machines which shape us in their own image, also make available new forms of attention, ways of orientating ourselves."As Mysteries Come And Go, So You Are The Weird Thing" was a passage from a note left on the nightstand by Jose’s 8 year-old daughter, Olivia, in order to “creep me out”. She has developed an interest in literature and TV that focuses on the supernatural (ghosts, spirits, the abnormal, etc). Yet, she's also easily frightened by those very things. They are like the whiplash of Benjamin’s fairground rides, where the modern traveler can safely look out over the precipice of disaster: they attune and re-attune the sensorium, invite new orientations. They perform pedagogical re-attunement: As mysteries come and go, so you are the weird thing.

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﻿﻿Jose Di Gregorio (American) was born in Puerto Rico, and is of Argentine descent. He attended Pont-Aven School Of Contemporary Art in Pont-Aven, France, as well as Herron School Of Art And Design, where he received his BFA. His paintings and murals involve complex geometric patterns, depicted in celestial nightscapes and rich gradient colors. He has recently completed murals in Mexico City, and in Wynwood during Art Basel Miami. Jose lives in Sacramento, CA.Artist website: http://josedigregorio.com/